Archive for the ‘demolition’ tag

The former Packard plant on Detroit’s East Grand Boulevard is headed to auction. Wayne County has foreclosed on the parcels that make up the remains of the vacant 3.5-million-square-foot complex, and will offer them as a single package at auction in September, hoping to find a buyer that will either demolish or redevelop the former factory.

“Generally, it’s sitting as an eyesore; people have been injured in there,” said David Szymanski, chief deputy treasurer for the county. “Our fervent hope is somebody will take an interest in the property, somebody with deep pockets, and find some productive use. The plant consists of 43 properties. We’ve linked them all for purposes of sale, because if somebody buys one property and not the rest, it’ll never get developed…. We want it all to go as one package.”

Szymanski explained that, with the foreclosure, the various levels of government – the state of Michigan, the city of Detroit and Wayne County – are given the opportunity to buy the parcels for the $975,000 owed in back taxes. If all three pass in turn, as Szymanski expects them to, the property will head to auction in September, with a mininum opening bid of $975,000. If that auction fails to provide a buyer, there will be another auction held in October, with the minimum bid set at the cost of auctioning the properties. Szymanski said that figure has been put at $500 per parcel, making the minimum bid $21,500.

If after that the property still goes unsold, it goes to the city of Detroit – unless the city objects, as it may. Then it would pass to Wayne County. The county would likely donate it to a city, state or county land bank, which would try to find a buyer. “Now, I do not anticipate that it will make it to that step,” Szymanski said. “Where along the line it goes, I can’t say. I’ve heard rumblings of people that are interested in it for this purpose or that purpose. We’re waiting for something concrete; I’m not holding my breath.”

Because the county does not want to see the former factory continue in its dilapidated state, it has attached a “reverter clause” to the deeds, requiring the taxes to be kept up-to-date for a minimum of two years, and giving the buyer six months to demolish the buildings or “secure and maintain” them. If the buyer fails to meet those requirements, the county can take the property.

Though the once-proud factory stands in ruins, Szymanski suggests that much of the rugged, reinforced concrete construction is still structurally sound, and that some of the buildings could be renovated and reused. “When they built these, they built them like the pyramids, to last forever, not knowing how strong the material was,” he said. “The framework is strong enough I think that you’ve got no problem. I doubt that it’s something you want to demolish and start from scratch; you probably want to use this infrastructure, and rebuild.”

The factory dates back to Packard’s 1903 move from its birthplace of Warren, Ohio, to Detroit. Designed by Albert Kahn, who became one of America’s foremost industrial architects (his works include Ford’s Rouge plant and GM’s headquarters of 1919), the East Grand Avenue plant was one of this country’s earliest examples of reinforced concrete construction, and was once admired as one of the most advanced factories in the world. The purchase of Studebaker by Packard in 1954 and creation of the Studebaker-Packard Corporation had set the stage for the withdrawal from Detroit to South Bend, and it was the subsequent management contract with Curtiss-Wright that made East Grand expendable. Packard shut down the assembly lines at the plant on June 25, 1956.

While the plant steadily crumbled and suffered from vandalism and fires since then – and its famous facade sold at auction in 2008 for $161,000 – it actually had paying tenants in it until 2010.